


the window

by ndnickerson



Category: Nancy Drew - Carolyn Keene
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28142187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: An unexpected change in Nancy's life leaves her reeling.
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

Nancy was already at the point of tears when she opened the apartment door.

She'd had a hell of a day. She was wearing her backup pantyhose, which, it turned out, were just as fragile as the pair she'd somehow nicked earlier in the day, and a jagged ladder stretched from her ankle to mid-calf. A splash of sauce from her pick-me-up splurge—a takeout order from a new Chinese restaurant a block away from her office—had landed on the lapel of her favorite winter blazer, and all the cursing and frantic scrubbing in the world hadn't done much to improve it. Her stomach had been roiling all afternoon, one of her clients had skipped bail, and another had been handed _double_ the maximum sentence by the judge. Thoughts of what she'd argue on appeal had crowded out everything else that had been roaring in her head before the gavel had been struck, and she had spent the past two hours working on a brief.

Her feet hurt. She hadn't had more than five hours of sleep a night in the past week, and the extra-strength pain reliever she had downed with a sip of water and a six-months-expired protein bar as a mid-afternoon snack had definitely worn off.

The first thing she saw was the suitcase.

Six years ago, she had tied that length of batik-print cloth around the handle, a lucky save from the remainders bin in the fabric section. It was meant to make the otherwise-forgettable black suitcase, a little scuffed, with a handle that only seemed to extend if she were clenching her teeth, stand out on the baggage carousel after they landed in Florida for their honeymoon, when the luggage was stacked in the back of an airport shuttle as they went to the hotel and back again. That was the last time she'd seen it, too: unpacking tangled underwear, t-shirts that had dried crumpled from seawater and cast a fine rain of sand onto the linoleum in front of the apartment's washer, a ridiculous fishing hat for his father, a blank journal with pressed flowers on the cover for his mother.

There were a hundred innocent explanations, but when she glanced from the suitcase to her husband's face, Nancy's eyes were already swimming with tears, the back of her throat thick and stinging from their rise. She dropped her briefcase and felt herself collapse against the still-open door, sending it slamming into the frame. Her keys, still dangling from her other hand, dropped to the floor. She only realized that when her suddenly weightless fingers easily clenched into a fist.

"What," she croaked out.

He was wearing a sweater she had picked out for him, and that somehow made this worse. Comfortable jeans, sneakers. His wedding ring—at least that still, and that would have given her hope if she hadn't been able to see his expression.

He'd always looked at her with such love and adoration in his eyes. Always. To see it gone now was like seeing a stranger in his skin.

He shook his head, his jaw tightening for a moment before he stood. "Don't tell me you didn't see this coming," he said, and she saw a quick flash of—pity, resignation—in his expression.

She shook her head slowly, her back still against the door. If she didn't let him leave, he couldn't leave. All she had to do was make sure he couldn't leave.

He couldn't leave her.

"I met someone."

Nancy shook her head. A pair of hot tears slid down her cheeks as she stared at him, afraid that if she looked away, he would somehow slip away too.

He sighed and glanced away from her.

So this _was_ getting to him.

"We can work it out," she said, rushing to fling those words into the silence between them, an impassioned promise that she'd heard herself voice too many times. "I'll..."

The expression he turned on her then wasn't angry, or sympathetic. Just resigned. "I believed you the first time you said it," he said quietly. "The second time, the third. I love you, baby. I always will. But you aren't _here_ anymore."

She gasped out a sob. "I can be," she protested. "I will be."

But those words had been in the air between them before, too, and he just shook his head slowly. "I've spent the past three weekends with her," he said. "And you didn't notice. For all I know, all those late nights..."

"Baby, I would _never_ —"

He smiled and closed the space between them, gently stroking his thumb down the curve of her cheek, wiping away the tears there. "You'd never cheat on your job," he replied softly. "Not with anyone else, but certainly not with me."

She closed her eyes, sending another wave of tears down her cheeks. "You... You can't go. You... Please." She hated hearing the wavering in her voice, but she was beyond desperate. "You're all I have."

His hand dropped away. When she opened her eyes again, he had taken a step back.

"I love you," he repeated. "I'll always be here..." He shook his head. "Not _here_. But, you can always call me." He smiled, something bittersweet, something hurt. "The few times a month you surface for air and need human contact. This doesn't have to be ugly, unless we make it that way."

She gasped. How long had he been thinking this way? The past six months?

The past three _weekends_ he had been with her?

She could remember him, sitting on the couch, feet up on the coffee table, popcorn, some sports thing on the television—a brief impression as she passed through, work already in her head. Falling asleep in the office-slash-guest bedroom when she was too tired to keep her eyes open; waking to find the coffee made. The perpetual list of all she had to do was whirling in her head, the cacophony drowning everything else out. Motions to file, briefs to complete, witnesses to contact, experts, past employers, disbarred attorneys and retired judges, cops on pension with thick notebooks scrawled with observations and details and sketches. Wake, coffee, phone calls. Wake, coffee, toast.

Their kitchen—she couldn't remember the last time she'd made him an actual meal that didn't involve a frozen pizza or a can of ravioli. _He_ had made meals. For a while. And then that had tapered off, too, as the plates of leftovers went untouched and rotated off the refrigerator shelf.

God.

He was her roommate.

_No._ He was so much more than that.

He was tugging the handle up to roll the suitcase when she took a step toward him. He glanced up at her in mild interest, a little wariness, but she saw no regret in his expression, nothing indicating he was wavering on this. He just didn't want _this_ , or _her_ , anymore.

Nancy took a breath, and could feel herself already mentally crossing her fingers. Maybe he could too. "We could go to counseling," she suggested, her tone tentative.

He snorted. "You're where you want to be," he pointed out. "I'm the only part of your life that doesn't fit. Even someone we paid to get us back together could tell us that in the first meeting."

She choked back another sob. "That's not true. You've been with me for so much..."

He nodded. "And that part, I would never take back. I wanted to help you. You were everything, absolutely _everything_ , to me." He smiled again. "But that was a long time ago. You don't need me as a crutch anymore. Haven't in a long time."

She shook her head, pressing herself against the door again as he took a step toward her.

"Nancy," he said quietly. "Get some rest. Think it through. Imagine your life without my daily presence and you'll realize you're already there. I'm just taking away the guilt."

She sucked in another breath that very nearly became another sob. "Please don't leave me," she whispered.

His hand brushed hers, and he gave it a little squeeze. "You left me a long time ago," he murmured. "It just took me a while to figure it out. It'll be better, I promise. I'll call you every now and then, remind you to go out in the sunlight. And who knows." He shrugged. "Maybe six months from now..."

Her heart lifted a little. If she changed, truly changed, maybe he would take her back.

Hell. He would _definitely_ take her back.

She nodded, but it was still so incredibly hard to step away from the door. "Six months," she agreed. "We can get a coffee, catch up. Admit how much we miss each other."

That bittersweet smile returned. "Yeah," he murmured. When he closed the distance between them, her heart began to pound, but he didn't embrace her. Instead, he brushed a very quick kiss against her cheek.

"Take care of yourself. You won't let anyone else do it."

And then...

The door closed behind him. He was gone.

She counted off the seconds after. He'd reconsider; she would hear the deadbolt _thunk_ back, would see his handsome face light up as he admitted it had just been a very badly-timed joke. They'd go to counseling. They'd been together too long to just give up on it like this, in what felt like, to her, a single hour. A single hour at the end of an already singularly shitty day.

He'd been with her in that horrible time after her father had died. Through law school. He'd been beside her for so long.

He'd been beside her for so long that she had started assuming he always would be, that their past was enough to sustain the present. That once they had spoken the words to each other, that would be all they needed. He had loved her for so long, and she had known he always would.

_How could he have met someone else? How?_

Oh God.

In her heart of hearts, she knew he was right. Six months from now, maybe they would meet for that coffee, but nothing in her life would have otherwise changed, and he'd be happy. Free.

"It's over," she whispered, and sank to the floor, burying her head in her hands. Everything she had worked to achieve, everything he had done to support her...

Well.

If Don Cameron, the sweetest, most considerate, most supportive guy she had ever met couldn't make it work with her, no one could.


	2. Chapter 2

Ned Nickerson felt his phone buzz against his hip and reached for it automatically, even as he struggled to keep up with what Carmen was saying. His eye skimmed over the brief preview before he could stop it.

He'd read the first message, which had arrived yesterday, solely because the app's logo was apparently an omega symbol and he automatically connected that with his old fraternity house. But he hadn't been able to find an app on his phone with that logo, so after some brief puzzlement, he'd decided it must have been spam via some new means he had never heard about.

NED, your SOULMATE is waiting! Find the LOVE of your LIFE...

Some bullshit astrology horoscope thing. He shook his head, swiped away the notification, and put his phone away.

"Any questions?"

Carmen was pretty. Ned was pretty sure she was shy, or had been for a long time; he caught the faint hesitation sometimes. She was very enthusiastic about her job, though, and was a fount of information.

Ned shook his head. "Not yet, but I'm sure plenty will come up."

She flashed him a grin. "I'm sure they will. Especially for the first couple of weeks, you'll always have a staffer nearby. No big deal."

Ned grinned in return, and watched a very slight blush rise in her cheeks.

Ahh. That might explain the hesitation.

Initially this summer job had been something to bulk up his resume, but now that he'd actually started the rounds with Carmen, Ned was fascinated by the work. Her group was helping bail people out, lobbying for reforms that went all the way from minor dignity-based changes to full-out abolition, connecting suspects with legal representation, even interviewing family members of those in prison or jail to discuss what supports they needed. It wasn't that Ned had never linked what he was learning in the classroom to real life, to actual people who needed help, who weren't malevolent career criminals in dire circumstances. But that had been academic, and this was so much _more_.

He'd been growing uncomfortable with his plans to join a prosecutor's office, and even more uncomfortable with the idea of fully committing to corporate law. With this, he felt like he really could make a difference, as clichéd as that sounded. He just hadn't figured out how it would work yet. He didn't exactly have a private fortune that he could use to bankroll this hobby, but maybe he didn't need one.

Carmen glanced up at the board and sprang to her feet, reaching for a pole to steady herself. "Next stop."

Ned rose too, glancing back at his seat to make sure nothing had somehow slipped out of his messenger bag. He was in business-casual, a green polo and khakis, but Carmen wore skintight denim and a well-washed t-shirt. Ned felt overdressed. He would have felt infinitely more so in his usual work outfit of a button-down and a charcoal suit, polished leather shoes, the heavy watch his parents had given him as a graduation present.

Carmen flashed a grin as they swung off the car and into the streaming masses of humanity flowing toward the exits. "There's this fantastic coffee shop I know, just down the block."

"Sounds great."

\--

NANCY, your SOULMATE is WAITING! Find the LOVE of your LIFE...

Nancy Drew groaned as she settled into the seat on the train. She'd known it was a mistake to go out with Bess and George last night—or, more accurately, all the _drinks_ had been a mistake. The first one, fine. She wasn't _that_ much of a lightweight.

But it had been a year since her divorce had been finalized. Don and his new wife had a baby on the way and were over the moon about it; Nancy stayed up to date with him on social media, but she was regretting it now. Seeing him happy with someone else still made her feel irrationally jealous, still made her want to sift through the new wife's posts to see what had made her _good enough_ for Don. What Nancy herself lacked.

What, she feared, she would always lack.

And maybe Don and his new wife were _perfect_ for each other, maybe Nancy wasn't the one he was meant to be with, but that didn't make it hurt any less. And that stupid spam horoscope message that had come through yesterday morning had just spurred her to order another drink and another, trying to convince herself that "the LOVE of her LIFE" wasn't something she was interested in right now.

But... she was. Dammit, she was. Don had been right; in some ways, his leaving was like removing a hand from a pool of water. His presence had done little, and his absence was swallowed by her work and all the chaos of her life, until almost none of his significance in her life remained.

Still. Seeing Don with a wife, seeing Bess's baby pictures, going home to an empty apartment... yeah, Nancy'd had her taste of freedom. She knew she could go through life with her work to keep her occupied. But she also understood that she didn't want to calcify this way, to let herself grow bitter and disillusioned about love.

Maybe she was on the cusp of it, but she wasn't quite there yet. She just... needed to meet someone.

Nancy snickered to herself. Considering who she interacted with most of the time, she'd have to take up a hobby or break down and join an online dating service. There was just no way, otherwise. And maybe Bess had had the same idea, and signed her up for one; Bess _loved_ talking about whatever her astrology app of the moment had forecast for her life.

_Hey, if you signed me up for some BS horoscope thing, you can take me off again._

Bess's reply came six minutes later, while Nancy was scrolling through news headlines. _I didn't—what horoscope thing?_

Nancy sent her a screenshot. She had tried to figure out what had generated it, but nothing made sense; nothing used that omega symbol logo. And Nancy didn't do all that much forensics work on cell phones.

She read it again; yesterday's message had just told her to go today, but that was the only difference.

NANCY, your SOULMATE is waiting! Find the LOVE of your LIFE by the end of this week or the WINDOW CLOSES! Be sure to visit your favorite coffee shop this morning to FIND TRUE LOVE before it gets away!

_Okay, maybe it's some weird coffee shop ad._

_Give me a few min. I'll track it down. I got you, girl!_

Nancy shook her head and glanced at her watch. Thanks to her hangover, she was definitely dragging this morning—and she wasn't even going to have time to swing by her favorite coffee shop, anyway. She was going to have to rush to make it to court on time.

She felt a weird stab of anxiety in her belly and dismissed it. It was a spam message! She didn't need to worry about it. And how ridiculous, to imagine that the love of her life would just happen to cross paths with her at a coffee shop.

_Where else could it possibly happen?_ some small corner of her brain replied.

Well. Maybe next time, instead of just staring at her phone, answering emails or checking the news, she might look around. At the other people waiting in line, staring at their own phones. It couldn't hurt anything.

Nancy reached her stop, and as she was rushing off the train car, she felt but didn't register her phone buzzing to note a message. She didn't have time to check it again until almost an hour later, when she was ducking into a bathroom stall during a recess.

Two missed calls, and a message from Bess.

_Call me when you can. This is... really weird._

The app, the one with the omega symbol, had messaged her again too.

Never fear, NANCY! Your SOULMATE WINDOW is STILL OPEN! Wear BLUE tomorrow to catch his eye. 💕

Nancy sighed, even though her heart sped up a little. It wouldn't hurt to wear blue tomorrow; she didn't even have any court appearances scheduled. She'd even picked up a cute dress on sale last fall that she hadn't yet found a reason to wear.

Then she gave her head a little shake. What was she thinking? Obeying orders sent via some mysterious app on her phone?

Around the same time she had met Don, Nancy had done some detective work, mostly for friends and their families. She hadn't exactly grown cynical and suspicious of everything, but she had learned a lot. She checked her favorite coffee shop's social media, and a photo and message had been posted an hour earlier, with no mention of anything strange. Maybe Nancy's presence would have triggered something, but she doubted it.

After all, if she had gone to her favorite coffee shop, that would be a low-stakes trip. Wearing blue tomorrow while going about her business wasn't the same as carrying a red rose and yesterday's newspaper while wearing a tan trenchcoat in ninety-degree heat. She would probably be fine.

But maybe Bess could reassure her—or insist that she wear anything _other_ than blue.

It was a full day, and only extra-strength pain reliever, a _lot_ of water and caffeine, and her last-second decision to wear her most comfortable pumps got Nancy through it. When she collapsed into her seat on the train for the ride home, she was exhausted, but it was a good kind of exhausted. One hearing hadn't gone so well, even though nothing was final yet, but she had a good feeling about two of her other clients.

_Seriously, Nan? Call me like RIGHT NOW._

Nancy chuckled as she tapped the proper button. "Hey."

"Hey! I think you got in on initial testing or something because that app doesn't exist."

"Wonder what I stumbled onto that triggered it."

"I don't know. But it's, like, _nowhere_ , and I follow people who are fanatical about this stuff. I came within three seconds of posting it to see if any of them had seen it before, but maybe it's proprietary or something, and I don't want to make them pull it off your phone."

"Well, they can. It's not going to hurt my feelings. I got another message from it..."

"Send it to me _right now._ "

"Whoever's using it has to be tracking me, too. They knew I didn't go by the coffee shop this morning. And that's pretty creepy. Hang on." Nancy took a screenshot of the most recent notification and sent it to Bess.

"Hmm. Well, you look good in blue," Bess pointed out.

"And if it were some kind of sales scheme, I'd expect a link to a dress I could buy, something like that."

"Exactly. A coupon for coffee. An astrological sign pendant. That symbol isn't a sign."

"Not an astrological sign, anyway. It's an omega."

"I can't remember..."

"The ending."

Bess paused. "That does sound kinda... ominous."

"'The last soulmate you'll ever need'?" Nancy suggested.

Bess chuckled. "Well, it'd hardly be a soulmate otherwise, huh? I say wear blue tomorrow. Embrace your mysterious fate! And if you meet him, you'd better call me _immediately._ "

Even though Nancy's heart jumped a little at the thought, she still dismissed Bess's demand with a laugh. "Definitely," she said, rolling her eyes. "I'll even hand him the phone so you can sign off on the whole thing."

"Of course," Bess said. She didn't even sound like she was joking.

After a long, restless night— _could it be true? could I really meet him today?_ —Nancy found herself anxiously second-guessing everything. Maybe a blue blouse, instead of the blue dress, which was a _lot_ more revealing than she remembered, so much that she was considering pinning the neckline closed. Should she visit the coffee shop, just in case?

Then she stopped. _What if he's gay?_

The horoscope—app, thing, whatever it was—notifications were no longer on her phone. She still had the screen captures she had sent to Bess, but the actual notifications seemed to vanish overnight.

As she pulled up the screencaps, she stopped and gave her head another brisk shake. "I'm losing my mind," she muttered. Soulmates weren't real. She had never believed in it, but she _definitely_ hadn't believed in the concept once her husband had asked her for a divorce. She believed with all of her heart that Don had loved her while they had been together, for the first few years, that they had experienced true love. And then it had ended. If she found happiness with someone else, maybe it would be temporary. Maybe relationships really were like leasing cars, trading in for a new model every handful of years. Maybe that was really the way it should be.

She stopped, noticing a thin layer of dust thanks to the slant of sunlight over the bookshelf. Maybe her life was just incompatible with the concept of a lifelong true love. Maybe after a few years, any man involved with her would realize, just as Don had, that her first love was her job, that she poured so much of herself into it that very little was left for a relationship.

Don had tried to give her a wake-up call, she supposed. And to escape the pain of losing him, she had just buried herself in her job all over again.

When she had been out drinking with Bess and George, that script had been easy. She would never find love again, she was destined for this forever, she missed him so much...

But when she was sober, when she looked at her life, Don's absence from it wasn't the cataclysm the alcohol told her it was.

_Am I ready?_

She wasn't sure if she was ready to make the space for someone new in her life, to try again and do it differently this time. But she thought she was. Maybe.

Still a little distracted, she picked up her coffee cup—and managed to spill some all over the front of her new blue dress.

\--

Ned took a deep breath and swung open the door to the courthouse, gesturing for Carmen to proceed him. She flashed him a smile, swinging her bag as she headed in. All around them were all kinds of people: attorneys in expensive and inexpensive suits, people showing up to pay off traffic tickets or citations or appear for jury duty, to serve as witnesses, to request paperwork. It was invigorating to be here—and even more so to be wearing a pair of comfortable jeans and a polo. Ned felt like he was truant, almost.

"Divide and conquer," Carmen said, and Ned nodded. He had a list of what he needed, and Carmen headed for the elevator while Ned consulted the directory and went to the clerk's office.

He didn't know what it was. There was just something about today. The sky was blue and clear, and he'd greeted the day with a broad grin and as close to a song in his heart as he ever did. He really, _really_ liked this work, and if he could figure out how to make this his career for a few years—maybe it wouldn't pad out his resume the way he had initially thought it might, but he also thought it would be incredibly rewarding. Far more rewarding than anything he had done before this, anyway.

This felt like the fresh start he had been looking for, that he hadn't even quite realized he needed. He'd needed something to shake him out of his routines for a long time, and he loved the people he'd met here. He'd been turning down dates out of habit for months now, knowing that he couldn't spare the headspace or the attention needed to do it right, but now...

As his frat brothers had often reminded him, he would be knee-deep in offers whenever he wanted. Maybe his flirting skills needed dusting off, but he was just about ready to get back on that bike.

Motorcycle, maybe. He had a _lot_ of lost time to make up for.

The line in front of the clerk's desk was full of shuffling, fidgeting people staring at their phones. Ned joined the back of the line, glancing at his phone, but put it away. Today wasn't the kind of day to spend inside a glowing rectangle.

And then she walked in, joining the line behind him. Reddish-gold hair, blue eyes that were sparkling a bit, a battered brown leather messenger bag hanging by her side. Pale khakis, a turquoise shirt. She looked fabulous.

Then she glanced up as she finished slotting her water bottle back into her bag, and their gazes met.

And it was like being struck by lightning.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally published elsewhere; if you enjoyed it, please consider leaving feedback!


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